Democratizing to Incentivize - An Alternative Story

Setting: This scene takes place in an environmental engineering firm in Sacramento, California. The staff is gathering to discuss exciting changes to the company structure. (All people and events are completely fictional as this scenario is completely absurd).

Corporate Liason Carrie: It’s an honor making it to the office today and meeting some of you for the first time. Looks like everyone is super happy and everything is perfect. At Corporate, we’ve decided to replicate another local companies’ philosophy and created some company wide tuning that will work for employees at various levels. Given the difficulty of everyone’s job, we will be increasing your salary a bit.

Bossman Bob: That sounds great. Who doesn’t want more money??

Corporate Liason Carrie: Exactly. So let’s cut to the chase here. We think the right thing to do would be to democratize all salaries. Now Bob, your salary of 100k will be democractized to a standard 70k with possibility of that amount to be either 40k, similar to what Report Stapler Rob currently makes, or to your existing 100k.

Bossman Bob: ****

Corporate Liason Carrie: But don’t worry, since you are the most senior employee who has dedicated your entire life to this company, you will be getting an extra incentive bonus of nearly double to make up for it.

Bossman Bob: Whew! That makes sense.

Report Stapler Rob: (Walks in late, piles up the last 3 donuts on a plate and sits down) That’s crap, why don’t I get a bonus? Sometimes I staple the reports that Environmentalist Erin creates.

Environmentalist Erin: I staple my own reports. We are lucky if you even make it into work. I do have a question though. I make 80k now, do I get democratized to 70k too??

Corporate Liason Carrie: Yes, but don’t worry, it might be more or less than 70k, so it will be okay.

Environmentalist Erin: So wait! Report Stapler Rob could make more than myself or Bossman Bob?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Exactly! See how this is better for the whole office?

Report Stapler Rob: Hellz yeah! Will I have to come into work every day to get paid?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Well no. But remember, the more senior and experienced staff will get more bonus incentive.

Bossman Bob: Can you give us an idea of how much incentive bonus we would be getting?

Environmentalist Erin: This is ludicrous! Is anyone listening to this? Did Karl Marx just buy our company?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Bossman Bob, you could make more with your incentive bonus!

Report Stapler Rob: That’s crap, what’s my bonus?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Because you contribute almost nothing to this office, you will get some bonus incentive regardless if you come to work or not.

Report Stapler Rob: Seems like I should get more.

Environmentalist Erin: So wait! Bossman Bob’s salary could get democratized to 40k from his original 100k? That’s complete....

Corporate Liason Carrie: Hold on there Environmentalist Erin, he would get that incentive bonus for being at the top of the office, so....

Environmentalist Erin: But you didn’t say how much...

Corporate Liason Carrie: So it’s good for the office obviously.

Report Stapler Rob: How will we know what our salary will be?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Excellent question Report Stapler Rob. By the way, is that all you do here?

Report Stapler Rob: Hellz yeah! When I decide to help the team out and show up.

Corporate Liason Carrie: Well, to answer your question, the salaries will be completely random. We’ve created a box which I like to call H1-01. There’s a chance that the box has the full democratized salary and a chance of parts of the democratized salary.

Report Stapler Rob: Hellz yeah! What do I have to do to get one of those H1-01 boxes??

Corporate Liason Carrie: If you show up sometimes, that should be good enough.

Bossman Bob: I don’t see how this could be good at all for me. I worked my tail off to put this company in a position to succeed and now I may or may not make as much as Report Stapler Rob?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Don’t worry Bossman Bob, high ranking employees will still be rewarded for their standout performances.

Fast forward to August, when employees get to open their H1-01 boxes after all their hard work and dedication to see what they will make next year.

Environmentalist Erin: I got 60k and a 2k bonus. That’s 18k less than I made last year! Why even bother picking up a stapler, much less do these reports!

Bossman Bob: I didn’t even get my box.

Environmentalist Erin: Maybe you should restart your day and see if it shows up.

Environmentalist Erin: You waste of space! You didn’t do anything for that! I don’t think I’ve even seen you show up in the office but a handful of times!

Report Stapler Rob: Yup! And why should I even bother showing up now? This system is amazing. Look how we are all progressing financially together. Team work makes the dream work! Catch ya next August, Environmentalist Erin! You guys keep working hard! Peace!

Bossman Bob: Okay! Got my box now. Let’s see here. Son of *^@%*&lt; *~^*. 5k bonus? That’s not nearly double. That’s not even half of my old bonus. New salary of 40k?! Are you serious? I put endless effort into this company. I mentor the staff, keep the schedules running on time and organize all the day to day activities! I stay late and have put in a lot of personal equity. And, and, and....Report Stapler Rob does nothing and gets twice what I get??? Let’s get Corporate Liason Carrie on the phone!

Corporate Liason Carrie: Hi Bob! Hope all is going well.

Bossman Bob: Did you see my H1-01 salary?

Corporate Liason Carrie: I did, let me get back to you later.

Later on...

Corporate Liason Carrie: Don’t worry, we are going to revamp salaries next month, so what we will do for now is go ahead and let everyone keep their current H1-01 salaries, since they are working as intended. Then, we will go ahead and give everyone the same bonus salary until next month. Sounds great, right?

Environmentalist Erin: Is nobody hearing this?

Bossman Bob: So Report Stapler Rob is going to get more than me now AND the possibility to get more than me for every year until I retire?

Corporate Liason Carrie: Yes, as long as Report Stapler Rob shows up occasionally. But this is a group effort you need to remember, and we can all advance together. Take a look over the next year at the aggregate financial lift among your coworkers and I think you will feel incentivized.

Except this is a video game, not a job. I work for money, I play video games for fun. Get bent if you think I should be inflating my damage so I can get the best reward at the expense of someone else in my guild.

I can't wait for the HAAT rewards to be normalized. I do 16m damage in that raid and have had to bench some of my most fun teams so my guildmates can get better placement and feel more invested because I'm not a selfish ****.

Hey, ****, if someone did zero work for their $70k normalized salary, they'd get fired. If you're that mad that the lowly peons who can only do a couple million in a raid are getting the same rewards you are, then boot them. Quit acting like you're a victim of some cruel fate because now you're going to get slightly fewer shinies in your video game that doesn't matter and someone else who did what they could with the teams they had gets more than they would have otherwise.

Hey, ****, if someone did zero work for their $70k normalized salary, they'd get fired. If you're that mad that the lowly peons who can only do a couple million in a raid are getting the same rewards you are, then boot them. Quit acting like you're a victim of some cruel fate because now you're going to get slightly fewer shinies in your video game that doesn't matter and someone else who did what they could with the teams they had gets more than they would have otherwise.

We get it. You don't like to pay taxes. Get over it.

Your argument would be valid if it indeed was just "slightly fewer shinies" and not "almost no shinies". Besides, unlike you, the OP is actually funny.

Hey, ****, if someone did zero work for their $70k normalized salary, they'd get fired. If you're that mad that the lowly peons who can only do a couple million in a raid are getting the same rewards you are, then boot them. Quit acting like you're a victim of some cruel fate because now you're going to get slightly fewer shinies in your video game that doesn't matter and someone else who did what they could with the teams they had gets more than they would have otherwise.

We get it. You don't like to pay taxes. Get over it.

Exactly! Or let's take it to the most obvious and glaring issue. Solo'ing rancor.

Oh look! We all did the same amount of work! Great job everyone, we're just going to randomly assign salaries to you all. Yup, you're now making less than the first time you did the same amount of work. And next week you could make either more or less. No way to tell! Thank you for all your hard work and investment in our company.

This game is not a skill based game, it's game where gear and mods define performance. Sure the Sith raid has a learning curve and some will learn slower than others but eventually I think everyone will use guides and understand the mechanics.

The game relies on luck too, just look at mythic events, one person may end up with a gold like 20 + speed mod and another can end up with a sub 10 for the same effort. Who's to say that the one guy deserves the over 20 speed mod and the other deserves the sub 10? With those RNG elements in mind and the fact that skill isn't factored in, I would say that huge discrepancies in rewards would further increase that effect.

Additionally, you make a comparison of someone who doesn't show up at work to someone who's there all the time. Well if you put your 600 raid tickets in every sigle day and you show up for the raids but your roster isn't too deep yet to do much damage then you can't take that for lack of effort.

I mean who needs the gear more? Someone with a bunch of fully geared teams who can perform very well in the raid or someone who can't perform very well in raids due to lack of gear?

The sith raid has a very high ceiling. Look at rancor, you can literally solo it sub 10 minutes with just 2-3 characters, meaning a newer player can compete. No matter how deep your roster gets you will always be limited to do 10.3 million on rancor.

Tank same thing, with BB8 just about anyone nowadays can do tons of damage, no matter how deep your roster is people will bb8 will be able to compete cause you won't even have the time to put all of your roster into effect.

The sith raid works differently. The deeper your roster gets the more damage you can do cause the ceiling is too high even for a maxed out account. Even if you have all characters gear 12, modded and starred you will still be short tons of damage to do it.

This means that if you let people get too far ahead gear wise than their guildmates, their guild mates will never catch up, they will keep extending that lead and snowballing their advantage indefinitely!